Economics

Signs are there that it could, and it is Putin’s nightmare — Balkanization is the fragmentation of a larger region or state into smaller regions or states, which may be hostile or uncooperative with one another. It is usually caused by differences of ethnicity, culture, and religion and some other factors such as past grievances. ~ Wikipedia We may be watching dreams…

Okay, this is a really minor story but I think it illustrates a larger point that I’ve made in earlier articles, and that is that Russia just doesn’t understand some really basic ideas about the world. One idea I’ve talked about is how people actually do cooperate with each other…

Or “Confessions of a Lapsed Libertarian” — Years ago I read something about the old, high-end Hilton hotels. Apparently, they were each built with an “Atrium” towards the top of the property where the Operations Director or General Manager would live. That always hit me as a bit too on the nose, so to speak: they were…

Amazon’s new Time-Series Forecasting model — What is the most enjoyable thing when you read a new paper? For me, this is the following: Imagine a popular model suddenly getting upgraded — with just a few elegant tweaks. Three years after DeepAR [1], Amazon engineers published its revamped version, known as Deep GPVAR [2] (Deep Gaussian-Process…

Innovation follows a uniform pattern of adoption, because human behavior is remarkably consistent. Once you recognize it, you begin to see it everywhere. And a tsunami is coming. — If you’ve paid close attention, you’ll have noticed that since COVID-19 first arrived three years ago, everything has changed. Or, more accurately, everything has begun to change. I’m referring to where and how we work, live, learn and socialize; what we value and thus invest in and prioritize; how we…

This week John Batchelor and I discuss the continuing French riots over the change in the state retirement age. Plus a pending food crisis.

Michael Korvig and Michael Spavor, known as the “two Michaels,” returned to Canada after spending over 1000 days detained in China. Their story is a harrowing example of China’s human rights violations and its willingness to use people as a tool for geopolitical gain. It is also a story of…

Social change is not about changing people, but changing the register — Nearly every time I’m on a panel or in a conversation about civic harmony, social change or economic equality, someone eventually asks, “I agree, but how are we going to get people to….?” And that’s when the conversation turns to education, publicity campaigns, memes, or some other well-intentioned form of…